Wednesday, September 28, 2016

Howdy! Well, it has been a BUSY month+ since I last wrote. My man was able to get a very workable schedule change at his job, so he's now up here one week and down there (2+ hours south) the next. One week on, one week off. This is necessary so that we can have solid chunks of productive time to work on our new home. The down-side of this arrangement is that he won't leave his job until November 1st, but that's okay . . . given the (new schedule as a) trade-off!

Our first real chunk of time spent working on the trailer together began on August 19th. Parts of the trailer (mainly the kitchen & living room) were so scuzzy that we HAD to start there and make some visual improvements. When I look back, I realize how silly it was to spend the time there given the MUCH bigger (and structural) problems we soon discovered, but - like I said - it helped with the whole "feel of the thing" to get some of the dirt removed.

My man attacked the stove and oven. It's really a nice little stove, and I'm SO looking forward to having fourgas burners instead of the one, electric single-burner I make do with in my cabin.

There were years of gunk and loose rust to scrape off of the stovetop.

I took on the disgusting job of scraping the THICK, caked-on grease off the hood above the stove. There was an old saw blade laying around, and that was the best tool for the job (oddly enough). If you biggify the picture below, you can see how thick the putty-like grease was. YUCK!

Then, my man moved into the bedroom/bathroom area to do some investigation. We'd been told that the biggest issue with the trailer was the floor in that area which had suffered a lot of water damage. Seems that the water tank stored underneath the bed had leaked badly at one point, and the flooring had never been repaired there.

While he did that, I moved to the front of the trailer to check out the status of the floor there and the windows (i.e. how badly they leaked) and to do some cleaning.

There is one bad spot in the floor of the living room. If at all possible, though, we may leave this repair job until next year. I have a sneaky feeling that if we start ripping the damage out, we'll discover the same disaster that was the entire back end of the trailer.

All the windows and sills were coated in mold, dirt, dust and cobwebs.

I just remembered this area of the living room, too. The water damage is just to the left of the front door. I think I've conveniently blocked it out. As I mentioned above, I think this (moldy mess) will result in another bigger-than-anticipated rip-out and rebuild. While it may look worse than the other corner, the floor is not noticeably soft here. Note to self: mix up a tea tree essential oil treatment to spray on this visible mold.

My mom and dad, Mama & Papa Pea, came up in the afternoon to see the
trailer (I don't think my dad had seen it before) and bring all the
fixins for root beer floats!! To eat our treat, we took them over to
the new, permanent site where we'll move the trailer* so they could see
that space. (*As soon as it's solid enough to move!)

This will give you a rough idea of how the trailer will sit in the new space.

Back in the trailer, my man had pulled up the layers of old carpeting and then the linoleum on the floor between the bedroom and the bathroom. Conveniently, this area sits just inside the back door (which you can see on the left side of the picture).

Attempted patches to the water-damaged floor had been previously made with spray-in foam insulation and . . . poured cement????

While I'm tempted to leave you with that cliff-hanger (ha!), I'll end on a more positive note. Below is a progression pic of the living room from the time I first saw it to how it was at the end of this (above described) work period. Of course, NOW it's full again with construction materials!